Took a peek at the globe today and saw that Charlotte sits at approximately 35 degrees latitude. Beijing is at 39. So I got to thinking what city was close to that and lo and behold, the great city of Baltimore is also 39 degrees latitude. That'll give me - and you - a bit of reference. So, if anyone has spent a summer in the Baltimore/DC market, you'll have an idea on how hot it'll be over the next month. Urban heat dome, concrete, tall buildings, crappy baseball teams. Except they don't play much baseball in Beijing.

It's not Columbia, SC hot, but pretty durn warm nonetheless.

Not really sure what any of this means. It could draw some parallels or not. I'm no weatherman, though I have been wrong several times in my life, so we have that in common.

While I was at it, I looked at the distance between here and thar. Beijing is 7134 miles or 11,480 km away, or a convenient 15 hour plane ride. A mere pittance.

While I was at that, I figured I'd look at how one flies from there to there. According to United Airlines, DC to Beijing takes you north to Alaska (catchy) via Canada. Then we wave to the crab fishermen in the Bering Sea and voila, we're in China.

Some other ramdom thoughts:

• Do the kids in China play "Marco Polo" while swimming like our kids do? Or does "IT" say "Mao" and the other kids say "Tse Tung"? Or maybe"Dick" and "Nixon"?
• Can you really call guys that sail and work on crab boats "fishermen"? Aren't they really crabbing? Surely that's so, because they only catch fish by accident. That's why John Owen and I don't calll ourselves fishermen.
• What kind of bird lives in the "Bird's Nest"? Whatever it is, I'd hate to be standing underneath when it exacuates itself. A really stinky avalanche - yikes.